Attendance
by truemizzie
Summary: When Medda Larkson, a supply teacher, comes to the Newsies' drama class, she gets more trouble than she bargained for.


Disclaimer: Newsies is not mine. None of these characters are mine. In fact, nothing but the plot is mine, and even that is partially taken from the film itself. Yes, it is depressing.

Summary: When a supply teacher comes to the Newsies' drama class, she gets a bigger surprise than she bargained for.

Rating: So G it's not even funny, but I'll go with PG just in case.

* * *

Attendance

Medda Larkson left her car in the school's parking lot, having parked in a space marked "Brian Denton." She went to the back of her car and opened her trunk, pulling out multiple items including: her purse, a briefcase, and a box too large for her to carry herself. Nevertheless, she piled them all up together and attempted to reach the doors of the school. Unbeknownst to her, her purse had fallen off of the pile, and landed quietly behind her. It wasn't until she heard the voice of a young man calling her that she turned around.

"Hey you!" Medda turned to see a tall boy with light brown hair - possibly sixteen years of age - standing with her purse.

"Oh…thank you…" she began, attempting to approach him.

"I'll save you the trouble," he said, bringing her purse to her. "Want me to take that?" he asked, motioning to the box.

"That would be wonderful."

Medda handed over the box to this mysterious boy. When they were inside the school, he spoke to her, his eyes barely peeking over the top of the box.

"So, where's this going?"

"I'm not exactly sure. Do you know where Mr. Denton's classroom is?"

The boy gave a coy smile, which she could not see over the package.

"That's my drama class…follow me."

They reached the class in one piece, Medda nearly losing the boy multiple times throughout the journey. At one point, she was sure she had passed the same water fountain twice, but shrugged it off. It was probably just the architecture of the building. The door was locked when they reached it.

"Should I go find a custodian?" she asked. The boy dropped the box, more violently than Medda would have liked him to, and began playing with the handle on the door.

"Don't worry, we all know the way in," he told her. After kicking the bottom of the door a few times and jiggling the handle in multiple directions, the door fell open. He picked up the box and led her inside, placing it down on a considerably messy desk. He then walked up to her, took her purse and briefcase, and added them to the pile.

"Does Mr. Denton know that you-" Medda was cut off.

"Practically live in his classroom?"

"Well…yes."

"Sure he does."

Medda was taken aback by the quickness of the boy's answer. He smiled at her, giving a quiet chuckle, and began to leave the room. She called back to him.

"What's your name?"

The boy wheeled around.

"Just call me Jack," he told her, and closed to the door on his way out. Medda quickly picked her purse off of the disaster that was Brian Denton's desk. She opened it up, checking every pocket to see if any money had been stolen. Not a penny was missing from her purse. It turned out the boy had been a good one after all. She sighed. She really needed to have more trust in students. Her professors at the college were always telling her that, saying that if she didn't she would never be a full-time teacher. She decided that today would be the day for her to test out the idea.

Suddenly, Medda needed to use the washroom. She approached the door. The handle would not turn. Medda was frightened. Had she been locked in the classroom? She decided that instead of worrying, she would simply set up her things. That washroom could wait. After taking the box to a desk at the front of the classroom, she began pulling props from it. She placed the objects on the table before her. They included fake skulls, magic wands, top hats, and a few costume items including brightly coloured dresses, some frilly shirts, and aprons. When finished, she heard a knock on the door. She looked through a small window in the door to find a considerably old man on the other side. She knew his name well: Joseph Pulitzer, the Principal.

"Mine if I come in?" he yelled through the glass. She nodded, and listened as he himself fiddled with the handle. Finally working it, he walked through the door and immediately held out his hand for her to shake. She did so.

"Welcome to the school," he told her. "Would you like me to show you around the classroom?" Medda was about to tell him that she was fine, so she could use the washroom, but he was too quick. He put his hand on her back and began leading her past the desks towards a raised platform at the back of the room, which was blocked by a black curtain. "This is our stage," he told her.

"It's beautiful," Medda answered him. She was hoping the tour wouldn't last too long. He opened the edges of the curtain and walked through. Medda followed obediently.

"This is the wire to open the curtains. Don't worry, Snoddy is our resident Stage Manager, he knows how to work all of the electronic items," he added, noticing that Medda was quite interested in a panel of buttons that sat in the right wing.

"That's good…" Medda rolled her eyes. _Why is a 'snoddy' handling equipment?_

"Oh, what am I thinking, showing you all of this?" Joseph proclaimed. Medda was instantly afraid. Was she in trouble?

"Forgive me," he asked her. "Your class starts soon. I'm just so sorry to keep you from it - you'll need some more planning time, I'm sure."

Medda let out a sigh of relief. "Sir, how long until the class starts?" Would she have time to use the washroom? Pulitzer checked his watch.

"You know, it starts just about right now," he told her. Medda nearly huffed, but held it in. The bell rang.

"Enjoy your first class, Ms. Larkson." Joseph Pulitzer led her back to the class and then left, leaving Medda all alone. He closed the door.

Medda, defeated, walked over to Mr. Denton's desk. She pulled out the chair…it rolled, to her surprise. She never knew many teachers to have rolling chairs, as she knew that the students would always try to steal them. Still, she sat down, quite comfortably. It wasn't until she heard the handle being picked once again that she perked up, and made her way to the front of the class. One by one, boys filtered in. None of them seemed to notice her, and instead of sitting down in their seats, they all grouped around into one big circle in the center of class, sitting on the desks themselves. Medda could not quite understand what they were saying, only that she knew she had heard the words, "Snoddy," "Bumlets," and "Pie Eater" used quite often.

Finally, one of the students seemed to notice her. He was a boy with very light blonde hair and blue eyes. "Check it out," he said to the group. They shifted around on the desks to face her. Medda recognized one of the boys as Jack, who had helped her into the classroom in the first place. They waited for her to say something. She decided on something simple.

"Would you all take your seats, please?"

"Sure thing," they replied to her, some of them actually speaking in unison. They stood up, and began walking around the desks. Medda noticed that they were taking way too long.

"Is there a problem?" she asked, almost toughly. She instantly reprimanded herself. _I'm supposed to trust them today!_

"Where do I go, again?" a darker skinned boy asked one that Medda noticed wore an eye patch.

"I don't remember," he replied. Medda spoke again:

"Don't you know where your desks are?"

"Well sure…" an Italian boy yelled up to her, trying to pick between two desks, "They're somewhere in this room." Medda sighed as the rest of the class laughed. She walked over to Mr. Denton's messy desk and fiddled through a few papers. To her delight, she finally found a seating plan. She would use it to take attendance.

"Alright…everybody just line up behind the desks." The boys followed her orders, and made a line-up between the desks and the stage. Medda pointed to the desk at the front right. "Jacob Aselin," she announced. A boy (who Medda was amazed to see wore overalls) walked to the front and sat down in the desk.

"I'm usually called Jake," he told her politely. Medda nodded, smiling at him. _So far so good. _She pointed to the next desk.

"Jamie Carlton," a dark haired boy with glasses approached his desk. The blonde boy who had spoken before yelled up to her.

"We call him Specs!" Medda frowned.

"Do you mind that they call you that?" she asked. _Kids and their bullying._

"Everybody calls me that," he told her. There was a confused look on his face. Medda shook her head and pointed to the third desk.

"Josh Cimmerlan." The blonde boy sat next to 'Specs.'

"We call him Dutchy," he told her. Medda smiled. They were getting back at him, it seemed.

"Patrick Darling," Medda almost giggled at this name. "They don't call you Peter Pan, do they?" she asked the short boy who sat down. He played with his noticeably pink suspenders.

"Actually, they call me Spot," he told her, toughly. Medda was taken aback by the harshness of the statement, but chose not to comment. She directed her attention to the desk behind this 'Spot.'

"David Jacobs," a boy with curly brown hair sat down quietly. She waited for his nickname. None came. She called out the next name.

"Frances…wait. This is out of order," she noted to herself. The boys looked pointedly at her.

"What's out of order?" the boy called Jack asked her. He walked up to her, and stared at the page over her shoulder. Medda answered him uncomfortably:

"The names…they're meant to be in alphabetical order."

"They are," Jack told her. She pointed to the name she had nearly read.

"Frances Sullivan. The next name is James Kim, see? It's wrong."

"But the next name isn't Frances Sullivan." Medda rolled her eyes.

"What is it, then?" _Why are they trying to torture me!_

"It's Jack Kelly."

Medda flipped her head around to stare at the boy.

"What are you trying to do?" she asked him.

"I'm trying to tell you that where it says 'Frances Sullivan,' it means Jack Kelly. And that would put things back into alphabetical order."

"Who here really is Frances Sullivan?" Medda ignored Jack, whose full name she could only assume was Jack Kelly. To her surprise, he raised his hand.

"No…you're not Mr. Sullivan, you're Mr. Kelly."

"I'm both," he flipped his hands out and gave a dramatic shrug. Medda knew she would have a lot of trouble with this boy.

"Why would your name on the page be Frances Sullivan, and your name in real life be Jack Kelly?"

"Because…Sullivan looks pretty in writing, and Kelly sounds better."

Medda rubbed her forehead. "Just sit down." Jack/Frances did so. Medda, defeated, pointed to the next desk.

"James Kim."

An Asian boy reached the desk before Medda could even get a good look at him. He sat, then immediately stood up again. "Call me Swifty."

"The Rake," the boy with overalls - Jake - added.

"The Rake?" Medda asked. "Doesn't that mean-"

"Yeah, but I don't, don't worry," Swifty told her. Medda was about to call the next name, but decided to ask a question instead.

"Why do you all have nicknames?" _Jack Kelly _raised his hand…ironically. Medda nodded to him.

"Everybody in the drama club gets a nickname," he told her.

"Then…what about David. Or Jake. They don't have nicknames."

"Jake is a nick name."

"And David?"

"He's new, we haven't come up with anything good for him yet."

"Well, there is the 'Walking Mouth,'" the boy called Spot jumped in, "But he doesn't like it much."

"The 'Walking Mouth?' He hasn't said a word yet."

"Oh, he will," Spot told her, "You just wait."

David rolled his eyes. Medda put the list down.

"Well…we don't have much time in this class, so…perhaps you should all just tell me your nicknames?"

"But then we won't know where to sit!" the boy with the eye patch yelled out from the line at the back.

"Just…just sit wherever you want-" the boys began to move, "_-after_ telling me your names."

The boys rattled off their names.

"Kid Blink."

"Mush…Mush Meyers, sometimes."

"Bumlets."

"Itey."

"Snitch."

"Skittery."

The list went on until all fifteen boys were seated. Medda noticed that one desk was empty.

"Who's missing?" she asked the class. They looked around. The Italian boy - Racetrack - answered her.

"Snoddy isn't here."

Medda unconsciously checked her list.

"What's his real name?"

Again, the boys looked nervous. They all looked at Bumlets and Pie Eater, who shrugged together.

"None of you know?" Medda let out a louder sigh. "Well…is it…Michael Nouse?"

"No, that's me," Skittery told her.

"Then…Cody Sharp?"

"Me," Itey told her.

"Um…how about Alex Pinder?"

The boys looked around. None answered her.

"He's absent then," Medda marked him on her attendance list, then filled in the rest of the names as present. _Well, that was a challenge. But you made it through!_

"Alright," Medda got the class's attention back, "now for me. I am Mrs. Larkson, and I will be your drama teacher for the next hour. Now, the lesson plan I was given said that you are all to practice your exam play. I brought some costume items, if you wish to use them. You may begin."

Medda looked at the desk of items and began picking up all of the props and costumes that were for girls, laughing to herself about how she had forgotten that it was an all boys school.

"Oh, I need that," the boy called Mush told her as she folded up a pink dress.

"I'm sorry?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I'm playing Emily."

"You're playing Emily? But you're a boy."

"We're all boys," Mush told her.

"Exactly…" Medda began. "What play are you doing?"

"Our Town," Mush stated. Medda called the class to attention.

"Are you all meaning to tell me that your teacher has cast many of you in female roles?"

"What else was he supposed to do?" Jack Kelly asked her.

"Well…I'm not sure. Perhaps pick an all male play?"

"But those are so boring!" Kid Blink complained.

"And who do you play?" Medda asked the boy with the eye patch.

"I'm George."

"So…you're his love interest?"

"Yeah. Denton…Mr. Denton," he corrected, seeing Medda's face, "always casts us together."

"Why?"

"I don't know…'cause we work well together, I guess."

"Apparently…but how do you do the wedding scene?"

"Like…a wedding scene…" he began. Medda held out her hand.

"Never mind, never mind. Just rehearse as you will."

The next half hour passed without much interruption. Medda was slightly taken aback to see half of the boys dressed up in wigs and high heels, but ignored it. Trust, she reminded herself. I have to trust my students. She sat down in Brain Denton's desk as she waited, sifting through that day's lesson plan to see if she had missed anything. To her boredom, there was nothing but the rehearsal. She suddenly remembered that she needed to use the washroom quite badly. Standing up, she called the class.

"I'm going to use the washroom, class. David…" she pointed to the quiet boy, feeling that he was the most trustworthy, "you're in charge."

Medda had only been gone for five minutes. When she knocked on the annoyingly closed door, she walked into a room of chaos. There were boys giving each other piggy back rides, shifting desks around, literally dancing on them. She ran around the room, trying to calm them down. She ran to the front, and tried yelling at them. It wasn't until she herself had jumped onto a desk and started jumping up and down that the class even noticed her. They instantly quieted down.

"What are you all DOING!?" she yelled at them. It was Jack who answered.

"Practicing for the school musical," he told her, calmly. Medda jumped down from the desk.

"School musical?" she asked.

"Yeah. We're doing Les Mis. You should come see it."

"But…how do you do Les Misérables with all boys?" she asked.

"Same way we do Our Town," Mush said, laughing as he gave Kid Blink a high five.

"Let me guess…Cosette and Marius?" Medda groaned.

"Eponine, actually," Mush told her. Medda didn't want to know. There was, however, one question she needed to ask.

"Um…how do you hit the high notes if you're all boys?"

They all just laughed. Medda gave up on the question.

"Do you sing, Ms. Larkson?" David finally spoke.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

The class looked at each other.

"Will you perform for us?" Jack asked her.

"No, I won't. You'll clean up and finish your rehearsal."

"But we want to hear you sing." Medda was surprised to find that David was the boy who had said this.

"Well, you're busy, so no."

"We're not going to clean up until you sing," Jack said. The boys crowded around him. Medda glared at them.

"I'd hate to have to tell your teacher this. Now clean up."

"We're going to have to stand behind Jack," Blink told her. Medda noticed that Spot was sitting just outside of the group.

"Why aren't you joining their little cleaning strike?" she asked him. Spot shrugged.

"'Cause it's pointless."

"You don't want to hear her sing?" Jack laughed. Spot rolled his eyes.

"If we can get Spot to join us, will you sing?" Medda was completely annoyed.

"Sure, why not." Spot seemed like a strong enough kid. Medda sat back down in Mr. Denton's class, and watched patiently as David (to her surprise) attempted to make Spot join the rest of the group. Eventually, there were only five minutes left in class. She stood up.

"Looks like you'd better start cleaning," she said, pointing to the clock on the wall. Spot looked up at her.

"Well, I would like to know if our supply teacher's a decent singer or not. I'll bite," he told the other boys. Medda threw her arms up.

"I'm not going to sing!"

"But you told us you would," David reminded her. She glared.

"Fine…but…you all have to sing with me."

"What song?" Jack asked, grinning.

"Do any of you know…High Times, Hard Times?" Medda Larkson had officially lost to a group of sixteen year olds.

"What do you think?" Kid Blink asked her, an evil smile planted on his face. Medda straightened out, clearing her throat.

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked.

"One hundred percent," Jack told her. Medda began.

_"High times, hard times_ - sorry, I've started in the wrong key," she stopped, looking at the clock. Maybe the bell would ring a bit early. Suddenly, one of the boys - Itey - opened the curtains of the stage. There was a piano there. He sat down and began to play the introduction, in the perfect key. _Great._

"Okay…well…_High times, hard times, sometimes the living is sweet…"_

Medda sang through the first few verses. Finally, she made her way to the last chorus - the boys joined in with glee:

_"Oh, high times, hard times  
Sometimes the living is sweet  
And sometimes there's nothing to eat  
But I always land on my feet  
So when there's dry times  
I wait for high times and then  
I put on my best  
And I stick out my chest  
And I'm off to the races again! _

I put on my best  
And I stick out my chest  
And I'm off  
And I'm off  
And I'm off to the races again!"

The boys all applauded Medda and began to clean up, her happy that it was finally over. Finally, the bell rang, and some younger students were walking into the classroom, forming their own circle. The original boys yelled their goodbye's to Medda, who waved bitterly. She couldn't help but notice when David ran up to one of the new students, messing around with him a little bit. She met him at the door.

"Who was that?" she asked David. David smiled at her, with a face so smug that it could compete with Jack's.

"That's my little brother," he told her. "Les Jacobs."

Medda decided that she'd need to pull out the dresses again.


End file.
